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"I wait for the LORD . . . and in His word do I hope." (Psalm 130:5)
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N.2
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May 2007
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Schedule of Events
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The next event on the calendar is the Moving On Meeting at McCallister Square – Sat. Jan 19th from 1:00-3:00pm.
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Ponderings
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The pressure to preach a powerful, distinct, and convicting Bible-based message to disciple God’s children and reach the lost multiple times every week can be a daunting task. A preacher seeking to faithfully fulfill these obligations can easily become ineffective in the pulpit through redundancies, trite expressions, excessive use of biographical reflections, and masking inadequate preparation with an overemphasis on platform dynamics. Considering those obvious pitfalls in ‘preaching the Word’, the question arises, what can help produce a pulpit ministry that is constantly Bible-centered and spiritually hot?
A good beginning is to define a “proposition” for each message which serves as the compass for further sermon development. A “proposition” is a complete thought that indicates what the sermon is about, a succinct statement of the central spiritual lesson or timeless truth. This is an initial component of the sermon preparation and keeps the orientation on developing a message based on the core objective.
The selection of a “proposition” is not, however, the starting point in message preparation. The preacher must, first of all, have an inner personal desire to assimilate God’s precious Word in his own life. A preacher’s heart for communicating the Scriptures will be set aflame only by his personal habit of feeding on the Scriptures for his own soul. As he regularly absorbs the Scriptures to satisfy his spiritual appetite, like a treasure hunter who finds a precious gem and can’t wait to show it off to others, the preacher must want to compel others to come and see the nuggets and treasures he has found in God’s Word (Psa 12:6 The words of the LORD are pure words: as silver tried in a furnace…)
How does the preacher mine the gemstones of God’s truth? He must believe that God has purposefully arranged the Scriptures in a logical order and structure. When the Holy Spirit impresses on the preacher’s heart a specific main message or major theme of the Bible, the work has begun. The Holy Spirit has a central point in mind as He communicates each statement, paragraph, chapter, book, collection of books, testament, and of course, the entire Canon. Once the principal theme has been fully developed, the remaining biblical material will provide support for it. Like the prospector pursuing a productive vein, the preacher’s use of this thematic-study approach to develop his sermon, by breaking down the biblical text according to God’s emphases, will yield up those precious jewels of heavenly wisdom in an orderly and profound manner.
The preacher’s frequent obligation to expound God’s Word will always be a weighty matter but it is not necessarily a cause for his preaching to become a mechanical routine. The chasm of God’s revelation is lined with priceless gems that a preacher can discover through a thematic approach to Bible study. The old-time prospector was obsessed in exploring, digging, and panning to find his precious treasures. So the preacher must not forget to carefully explore God’s Word with interpretive questions: what, where, who, how, and why and to dig through lexicons and expositional commentaries as he pursues the nuggets, gems, and jewels hidden there. Joy will result from these discoveries of the riches of God’s Word, displaying their brilliance in proper biblical context, and serving them up to God’s children for the purpose of promoting new life and godly fruit (Rom. 10:14).
Wanderings
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Since our last field report we have ministered the Word in message and music to many more churches. Aug. 5th at Gospel Baptist Church demonstrated that the primary purposes of preaching God’s Word are for the spiritual benefit of others, whatever their age or physical ability. As I preached in the Sunday service, there were about 100 young people from pre-school age to late teens present who had ridden to church on buses. Bro. Ron Royalty, the senior pastor, started this bus ministry in the early 1980s so young people would hear the gospel. Now over two decades and a half later, his fleet of buses still transports young souls from needy neighborhoods all over the greater Youngstown, OH, area.
In the latter part of the summer we conducted our annual Victory Banquet at Oakmont East Nursing Center. We had around 60 guests, 50 nursing facility residents, 11 guests from town, and about 20 volunteers from our church. We all enjoyed a home-made meal that included whoppie pies for dessert (a northern version of the moon pie) and a Christ-centered program that included special music and a gospel challenge.
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Copyright © 2006 Truth for Trials Ministries, Inc. All rights reserved. |
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